Comment by irishcoffee

As a decades-practicing engineer, I sure can stand to benefit from someone more experienced than me giving my work a health-check and some suggestions, but I don't NEED that because generally I'm one of the most experienced people. I benefit greatly from these more knowledgeable people.

High-level athletes know their bodies better than 99% of people, including non-sports doctors. They don't NEED to see a doctor, but when they're out of their depth, talking to an experienced doctor, combined with the skills of the athlete already, the athlete probably gets more out of the doctor than a "normie" would.